MediaE2E is now What’s-On-India

What's-On-India has roped in names such as Sequoia Capital India and Nexus India as investors. Nexus India Capital is a leading India centric venture capital fund, whose other investments include Komli, Dimdim, Netmagic, Suminter, Dlight and Speedera; ...

Genpact to help Bhutan’s IT and ITeS sector. Are we moving up or down?

TCS, Wipro and NIIT did it in China. Now, Genpact is doing it in Bhutan. It is helping Bhutan to get on its feet in IT and ITeS sector. Bhutan didn’t have to look too far than its southern neighbor. Genpact is well positioned to offer a helping hand. Genpact would recruit candidates for its operation [...]

Financial Times Receives FIPB Approval For Facsimile Edition

Financial Times India Pvt. Ltd, the India unit of Pearson (NYSE: PSO) Plc., which publishes the British pink paper Financial Times, has received the first in a long list of permissions to launch FT's facsimile edition in India. The Foreign Investment Promotion Board has allowed the company "To induct foreign equity up to 100% by way of transfer of existing equity shares from the resident share holders to fresh equity shares". Fresh FDI (foreign direct investment) inflow is Rs1 lakh. FT first sought FIPB clearance in May. The launch of the paper is still some time away as the paper still needs clearances from the ministry of information and broadcasting as well as the Registrar of Newspapers in India. FT is also caught in a legal tussle over its title 'Financial Times', which is owned in India by Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd, the publisher of The Times of India.  The Wall Street Journal launched a facsimile edition in India in May. Related Updated: Financial Times To Launch Facsimile Edition In India Financial Times and Bennett, Coleman Lock Horns Yet Again Over Trademark Two Major Business News Brands Debut In India: WSJ, Forbes

Report: Ad-Funded Blyk To Launch In India

The UK's ad-funded, youth targeted mobile service provider Blyk is bringing its model of free talk-time and texts in return for viewing advertising to India. Mint.com reports that senior level recruitment is already underway, according to an unnamed source who was approached for a job at the new operation. Blyk spokesperson Ann Sarimo confirmed that Blyk plans on entering the Indian market, but declined to comment on timing. After signing up some 200,000 customers in the UK, the only country in which it is operational, it appears that Blyk, which was started by ex-Nokia (NYSE: NOK) president Pekka Ala-Pietilä, and funded by the likes of Goldman Sachs and Sofinnova Partners, has hit a wall. It reiterated a few weeks ago that it was shifting strategy, calling its UK operations, a "proof of concept," and saying that it was looking to partner with carriers, rather than build their own service country by country as originally planned. One of its biggest challenges was acquiring customers, a problem that wouldn't be such an issue with a carrier on board. Can the Blyk model succeed in India? After the jump. Can the Blyk model succeed in India? No word on which Indian carrier Blyk may have partnered with. But it seems that some think it could work. Sanjay Behl, head of branding and marketing operations at carrier Reliance Communications Ltd, told mint.com, "The model looks like a win-win for all stakeholders—cellular operators, customers and then advertisers. The youth would certainly lap it up." Behl declined to say if Reliance was Blyk's partner. Moreover, it looks like one carrier there is already offering something similar, though not on the scale that Blyk does. In May, telco Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) launched a service in which customers who registered to receive ads would get free time. The offer is only valid, however, for certain cases, for examples, receiving ads on your idle screen, and only lasts for a certain time period, such as a month. Related Ad-Funded Blyk Sees Future With Carriers, Not Standing Alone Interview: Pekka Ala-Pietila, CEO, Blyk: Mobile Advertising Is Not One Monolithic Market

Web 2.0, sexting, or… a millionth word question!

Web 2.0, sexting, or... a millionth word question!CIOL, IndiaRounding out the Top Ten were Web 2.0, versioning, word clouds, and petaflop. And you know which the most confusing Acronym for 2008? It was our own SaaS (software as a service)! Leaving IT behind, when we come to the India perspective, ...

Sabeer Bhatia Co-Founded Sabsebolo.com Acquires Jaxtr

Sabse Technologies, the owner of the web conferencing site Sabsebolo.com, has acquired Jaxtr, a company that allows users make free international phone calls via a PC. The amount paid for theacquisition has not yet been disclosed. Jaxtr, based in Melno Park, California, provides free and low-rate international calling services through computers to phones across the world. The company claims tohave over 10 million customers across the globe. Jaxtr has raised more than $20 million in funding and its investors include three of the original Skype investors. Sabsebolo.com is co-founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Yogesh Patel. According to the deal, Jaxtr will continue to operate under its ownbrand name and Sabse will maintain as well as expand the Jaxtr services. The acquisition will help SabSe in accelerating thedeployment of its additional applications to Jaxtr's large user base and to leverage an instant audience for its technology. The acquisition is also expected to increase Sabse’s market penetration and boost its growth as both Sabse and Jaxtr operate in the samemarkets. Jaxtr allows its users to reduce their international call bills by enabling them to connect their mobile phones to the web. It also allows its members to send free SMS messages across the globe and have a free online voicemail box. It’s ‘Café Jaxtr’ tool allows the members to find like minded people and talk to them irrespective of whether they are online or not. Sabse Technologies, based in Mountain View, California, has developed an application in the TAAS (Telephony Applications as a Service) space coupled with a web based API (application programming interface) that allows development for telephony applications. SabSe's customersinclude AirTel, Tata and Celcom, among others.

Online Advertising To Start Picking Up In A Year: Rediff CEO Ajit Balakrishnan

Rediff.com (NSDQ: REDF), arguably India's first and largest horizontal portal,recently annouced its results and reported a net loss of $8.86 million in Q4 FY08-09. The company attributes the losses to the slowdown in the online advertising sector. Ajit Balakrishnan, Rediff.com's Founder, Chairman and CEO, expects the situation in the onlineadvertising world to revive in about two to three quarters. He alsoexpects online advertising to match up with the TV advertsing in about two years from now. VCCircle.com spoke to Ajit Balakrishnan on the current situation in the online advertising market, and also on Rediff's investment strategy. Excerpts: How is the online advertising market doing right now? Revenues are derived from two sources One comes from the other online companies and the second from offline advertisers. The offline side is doing fine but more than half of the revenues of the Indian online industry come from the other online advertisers such as job sites, matrimonial sites, consumer finance sites and travel sites. These and a few more normally account for more than half the revenue of the Indian online industry. Those have been severely crunched downwards. All these industries are facing significant problems, for example, the airline industry itself is going through deep losses so the online travel agents arealso having a rub-off and are cutting budgets. Since the IT industry has stopped recruiting in significant numbers that has restricted the ad spend of the online recruitment sites. For all these reasons, the online industry has probably cut their budgets by half. So to that extent online advertising has contracted since last quarter. It'll last as long as the recession lasts. I think once the new government puts things together, situation may change in the next 2-3 quarters. By when do you think the online advertising markets will start picking up? Probably in a year's time. In a country like India, where there is still a lot of dependence on the traditional forms of media like print and TV for advertising, how do you see online advertisement sector coping with the competition? I think it's a kind of glass half full and half empty situation right now. Looked at one way, the reach of online, which used to be relatively small, today, is quite significant compared to TV. For example, we have a site called Moneywiz whose unique users arestarting to be comparable to that of TV channels such as CNBC-TV18. They are comparable – they are not exactly the same, say about 40% less. So in another year or two, these kind of sites will match TV channels and that's when something interesting will happen. What kind of innovations you think are required in the online advertisement industry for it to improve? The general view that all of us are taking, all over the world, not just in India, is that the online companies will have to come up with metrics which the big ad agencies understand. So it's the metrics like GRPs and TRPs that need to be produced and not CTRs (Click Through Rates) percentages and or such things. So there is a big movement within the online community to come up with these kind of measures and these are the measures on which 90% of the advertising is bought or sold. The big ad agencies and the media planning houses understand those metrics far better than the numbers than the people in the online world are used to producing. So I think that's the movement that's underway everywhere and it will apply to India as well. What are the trends that you are viewing currently in the online advertising space? One is the big trend towards mobile. More and more people are using the mobile phone as the primary medium for accessing or consuming internet. And this is in the most advanced form in the United States. With the advent of the iPhone, some degree of it is happening almost in every market. In India, the numbers are relatively small - may be 5-10% of all internet access is through the mobile phone now. With the advent of 3G, this will change dramatically. So that is one big trend - using mobile phone as a primary device for the access. The second trend which is underway is languages. It is slow but we can see the trend. The third big thing that we can see is that the consumers are reacting to advertising. There is a move away from too many advertisements thrown at them – irrelevant ads. If you see our new international site, which is at ia.rediff.com, you will see that there are no ads on the homepage. And the fourth big thing is to wrap a lot of social action around content- things like bookmarking, forwarding, looking at people who have bookmarked something. Originally innovated by Digg and others in a standalone context is now being embraced in the mainline portal world. When did you make your investment in examville.com? About a year ago. We have invested in four firms – the second one is Eterno, which is a mobile service. They provide access to newspapers on mobiles. The third is tachyon, which has been around for a while. They basically provide language text entering systems. And then there is Vakow, which we wrote off. We invested in it but the things did not work out so we wrote it off. The other three, we think are doing quite well. What kinds of stakes have you picked in these investments? All are minority investments. We like to invest and then help them in anyway we can. What amounts did you invest in Examville.com? Due to some reason we forgot to announce the investment amount during our conference so we cannot disclose it. But the stake that we have picked up is 26%. What was so interesting about examville.com that made you invest in it? There is a lot of interest and activity around the educational market, both in India and elsewhere. And people are playing at different ends of it – some people are providing educational content, some are providing equipments to schools. We have kind of dipped our toes in this edge of water which is the test preparation market. People who want to take SAT, GMAT, CAT can practice in an environment where they can get help from others as well. So Examville is a very interesting experiment on the SAT and the GMAT preparation market. The company is based in New York and it aims at the worldwide, including the national US market where the young people want to take the SAT exam. Would you be looking at making more acquisitions this year? I don't know. It is a good time to be investing. But we don't generally view these as acquisitions. We basically see them as investments and it's a good time to be doing that because it is recession when all these new ideas come to young people and we would like to support them. Rediff is already listed in the US but do you plan to list in India as well in the near future? We are an Indian company so someday we have to list (in India) but we don't have any plans for that yet. This is the last season we would ever look at listing or talk of our stock market activities. Rediff's revenues have gone down by 50% this quarter as compared to the same quarter last year. What do you think are the reasons for this? The reason is quite simple. The advertising revenue came down because of the online sector coming down but this certainly is not something that is keeping me awake at nights because this is the seventh recession in my work life. So during the recession, things come down and during such times you have to be very careful to conserve your cash and spend all your time in product devising. You don't try to do foolish things like expand sales during recessions. When the recession turns, all your product-line should be ready to go.That is what you learn during a recession.

Sabeer Bhatia’s SabSe Buys Jaxtr; Synergy; Ad Supported VoIP

Sabeer Bhatia co-founded SabSe Technologies has acquired Jaxtr, a Internet Telephony startup based in Paulo Alto. The amount of the acquisition has not been disclosed, but readers should keep in mind that Jaxtr, founded in 2005, had raised $21.5 million from a host of venture capitalists, including DFJ, Mayfield Fund, August Capital and Lehman Brothers. [...]

McAfee delivers network security strategy

McAfee delivers network security strategyCIOL, IndiaToday, there are too many vendors, too many appliances, and defenses that don't address today's attack risks such as malware directed at Web 2.0 applications, the porous perimeter and insider threats. McAfee's approach to securing the network is based ...

Lucky you are India – It is the best place currently for Job Seekers

Recession, crisis, downturn, Job losses etc. etc. have become so common that I dont think we spend a single day uttering those words. But there is a silver lining – why lining – there are many silver linings that have popped up suddenly in last month since the new potentially stable government has come to power. Things [...]